Rae Langton

Free speech and illocution

What one ought to mean by “speech,” in the context of discussions of free speech, is whatever it is that a correct justification of the right to free speech justifies one in protecting. What one ought to mean, it may be argued, includes illocution, in the sense of J.L. Austin. Some feminist writers, accepting that free speech includes free illocution, have been led to take the notion of silencing seriously in discussions of free speech.

Duty and Desolation

This is a paper about two philosophers who wrote to each other. One is famous; the other is not. It is about two practical standpoints, the strategic and the human, and what the famous philosopher said of them. And it is about friendship and deception, duty and despair. That is enough by way of preamble.

Pornography: A Liberal’s Unfinished Business

Old wars about pornography and censorship have new armies in radical feminists. So Ronald Dworkin once remarked, defending the new relevance of his now classic liberal defense of free speech in his essay, ‘Do We Have a Right to Pornography?’ Dworkin was right about the new battles, but wrong about his argument, which on the new battle ground not only failed to justify the permissive conclusion he desired, but helped to justify the prohibitive conclusion he despised. Pornography’s traditional foes said pornography is immoral. Feminists said pornography is ‘the graphic, sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures or words’. Feminists said that pornography harms women, subordinates women, and silences women. In this context, Dworkin’s old anti-moralist defense of pornography missed its mark.

Virtues of Resentment

On a consequentialist account of virtue, a trait is virtuous if it has good consequences, vicious if it has bad. Clumsiness and dimness are therefore vices. Should I resent the clumsy and the dim? ‘Yes’, says the consequentialist, counterintuitively - at any rate, Yes’ on an accuracy measure of resentments virtue: resentment should be an accurate response to consequentialist vice, and these are vices. On a usefulness measure of resentments virtue, the answer may be different: whether resentment is virtuous depends on whether resentment itself is useful. Equally counterintuitive, this answer divorces resentment from assessment of vice. Consequentialism is thus mistaken not only about when resentment is virtuous, but about what resentment is. Moreover it alienates the philosopher, for whom accuracy applies, from the agent, for whom usefulness applies. But abandoning this double standard would mean giving up philosophy.

Reply to Lorne Falkenstein

In Kantian Humility I argue that, for Kant, ignorance of things in themselves is ignorance of the intrinsic properties of substances, and that this is epistemic humility, rather than idealism: some aspects of reality, the intrinsic aspects, are beyond our epistemic grasp. The interpretation draws upon what Falkenstein takes to be ‘a novel and not implausible understanding of Kants distinction between things in themselves and appearances’ which views it as a distinction between the intrinsic and the relational. He concedes that Kant frequently puts his distinction in just these terms, that I make ‘a strong textual case for it’, that it is ‘plausible and intriguing’ and that it may even be ‘correct, at least for a certain strand of Kants thought’. He presumably also allows that this distinction between ‘things as they are in relation to other things and things as they are on their own’ is at base a metaphysical distinction, which makes no mention of how things look to us, appear to us or depend on our minds. I am pleased to find sympathy for this understanding of Kants distinction in a review whose overall tenor is so critical.

Subordination, Silencing, and Two Ideas of Illocution

1. It is wonderful that Rae Langton’s existing essays on pornography, on objectification, and on the links between them should be assembled and supplemented with three new ones. For some of us it is especially gratifying to have a book to recommend which is at once a compelling work of feminism and an excellent work of analytic philosophy. But one need not be a feminist or an analytic philosopher to admire Langton’s distinctive, engaging style, and to wonder at the care and rigour of her arguments. One does have to be a philosopher, perhaps, fully to appreciate the imaginative uses to which Langton puts ideas from historical figures, and from recent work in political philosophy, ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. Langton gets difficult things across with ease, and thanks to her extraordinary clear-headedness, her writing is a special pleasure to read. I’m not going to attempt to review the overall project of Sexual Solipsism. I want to take this opportunity to say something about one aspect of Langton’s treatment of the subject of pornography. As I see it, two normative principles inform the treatment. There is a political principle: that a right to equality is fundamental, being the wellspring for rights to liberty. And there is an ethical one: that there is something wrong about treating a person as a thing. So unexceptionable does each of the principles seem to many (2011) 2(2) Jurisprudence 379–385

Ghosts in the World Machine? Humility and Its Alternatives

At the heart of being lies a mystery, according to Kant: we have ‘no insight whatsoever into the intrinsic nature of things.’ Some people complain, but their complaints are misguided. If the complaints that ‘we have no insight whatsoever into the intrinsic nature of things’ are supposed to mean that we cannot grasp by pure understanding what the things which appear to us may be in themselves, they are completely unreasonable and stupid. What is wanted is that we should to be able to be acquainted with things without senses! (Kant 1781/1787, A277/B333)

Comment définir intrinsèque

Jaegwon Kim definissait une propriete intrinseque comme une propriete compatible avec le fait que l’objet ne serait accompagne d’aucun autre etre contingent. Mais cela impliquerait que la solitude serait une propriete intrinseque, or c’est une propriete extrinseque. Les auteurs definissent une propriete intrinseque de base comme une propriete independante de la solitude et de l’accompagnement et qui n’est ni une propriete disjonctive ni une negation de propriete disjonctive. Deux doubles intrinseques sont des objets qui ont toutes les memes proprietes intrinseques de base. Une propriete intrinseque peut des lors etre definie comme une propriete qui ne peut jamais differer entre deux doubles. Cette definition est ensuite appliquee a differents problemes. Si les lois de la nature sont absolument necessaires ou qu’un etre necessaire existe, de nombreuses connexions deviendraient alors des proprietes intrinseques et il sera necessaire de conserver un sens a la possibilite que ces connexions necessaires auraient pu ne pas exister. Les proprietes dispositionnelles seront intrinseques ou non, selon la conception des lois de la nature. Il est possible de suivre les consequences de la definition, en amendant eventuellement d’autres concepts. La definition peut aussi s’appliquer aux relations. Les auteurs comparent aussi leur definition a d’autres definitions anterieurement donnees par David Lewis et Peter Vallentyne.